As a carnivorous song-and-dance man, the people-eating plant Audrey II nearly steals the show in Cygnet Theatre’s excellent new production of “Little Shop of Horrors.” The tasty body parts it so gleefully munches seem leftovers from Cygnet’s equally good (and gory) “Sweeney Todd,” and the actors who make this garish and demanding plant sing and sway — David McBean as the Motown baritone and Jacob Caltrider as the leafy mover — are Cygnet regulars who animate the (puppet) plant in blissful tandem.

Audrey II begins life as a sweet little oddity, a Venus flytrap born of a total eclipse and lovingly bred by the nerdy florist’s assistant Seymour before growing to nearly to stage-filling size at Cygnet. The monstrous flora with the blood red smile booms “Feed Me” and sings sinister rhythm-and-blues, yet doesn’t upstage the rest of the cast — especially Melissa Fernandes as the bimbotic bad girl Audrey and the exceptional Geno Carr as her sadistic dentist boyfriend.

As he did in “Sweeney Todd,” Cygnet director Sean Murray chose a monochromatic gray-black palette for the show’s film noir-ish design (by Sean Fanning) and costumes (by Shirley Pierson). Even the flowers in Mr. Mushnik’s shop are ashen. Business is dying at this Skid Row storefront where Seymour (Brandon Joel Maier), and buxom Audrey are set to lose their jobs until the Audrey II phenomenon draws celebrity-gawking crowds.

“Little Shop” tapped some universal, creepy-funny bone that earned it a cult following as a Roger Corman B-horror film in 1960, before its screenplay was parodied by writer Howard Ashman (book and lyrics) and the brilliant Alan Menken (music) for the small scale 1982 musical. Since then, it became a film with a happy ending (with Steve Martin), a regional favorite, a Broadway show and major tour that hit San Diego in 2004.

Murray’s production returns the “Horrors” to intimate scale. Trampy but wide-eyed, with her New Yawk accent, her Betty Boop squeals and confident belt, Fernandes makes Audrey wonderfully sympathetic, even in her signature mock-ballad “Somewhere That’s Green.” As Seymour, Maier serves, but lacks her performing confidence. Though Phil Johnson is often funny as sadsack boss Mushnik, he seemed not quite comfortable in his part either.

But the Supremes-like chorus (Rhea Elizabeth de Armas, Cashae Monya and Heather Paton) is terrific, and every appearance of Carr — as the leather-clad, Elvis-like dentist, various agents and solicitors of both sexes — brings just the right degree of camp. James Vasquez’s inventive choreography — for the Motown trio, the Mushnik-Seymour tango, and especially for the prancing plant — holds many scenes together, and Tim McKnight’s music direction does the rest.